Are you listening?

I wasn’t. Or I was, in that half arsed way as words were lumped at us like bricks. Old Lennox also threw chalk sometimes. He was good at that, a neat wrist flick and you felt a sharp ping on your forehead. Terry Cohen got one in the eye. He didn’t complain. There was no point.

Mr Lennox taught Geography and, we were told, had been an a pilot in the war, fighter pilot, it was said. Spitfires. He never said what he did, though he banged on about the war, about fighter pilots. It should have interested us; I know, boys like that stuff, or are supposed to, but we didn’t. Form Four, belligerent  smart Alecs. He didn’t give a damn about us. Probably didn’t give a damn about anything. Certainly didn’t give a damn if that chalk hurt.

Cohen’s eye was red, like it had been washed in blood, and for the rest of the morning his eye wept and people teased him for crying which made him angry. It wasn’t the first time Mr Lennox picked on Cohen.

We all thought Lennox was too old to have been a killer fighter pilot in the war. He  should have been given the boot. Though, thinking back, maybe he wasn’t much older than our dads: he just looked old and brittle and better forgotten, put away like old text books in a book cupboard- dusty  and grey, like his wrinkly grey  hair, grey tweed jacket with elbow patches, and eyebrows like tangled wire…

This is the start of a short story I am working on. I think it’s going to be a ghost story because at the moment I am not liking Mr Lennox too much!